"It would be useless. We could not pay without instructions."
"I daresay I might manage with ten pounds till you could get an answer, if you choose to be so ridiculously over-cautious," Loveland insisted, loftily. "But in that case you must cable at once."
"You will no doubt be willing to pay for the message in advance?" suggested the cashier.
"Certainly not," said Val, no longer trying to keep his temper under control. "You've seen my card. Isn't that enough for you?"
"Business is business," quoted the bank employé, still unruffled, still blind to Lord Loveland's importance, cold to his necessities.
"And decency's decency," stormed Val, careless now who looked or listened, and in a mood to wreck all American institutions.
"Yes, it's as well never to forget that," the cashier hinted, significantly. "Sorry we cannot accommodate you at present."
"I'm hanged if you ever get the chance again," retorted Val, snatching his letter of credit from the counter. "I shall myself send a cable to the London and Southern which will make you repent your pig-headedness." And with this ultimatum he strode to the door, as if on the way to sign a death-warrant.
"By his looks, that will be an expensive cable, and make the wire mighty hot," Val heard a man chuckle as he passed, and there was a spatter of laughter, which (for his eyes) painted the opposite sky-scrapers bright scarlet.
"Beastly America! Beastly Americans!" he muttered. "I suppose this is their way of resenting the existence of aristocracy."